


No Loneliness (Like Theirs)

by musicforswimming



Category: The Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Other, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-22
Updated: 2008-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:57:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They love each other./There is no loneliness like theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Loneliness (Like Theirs)

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from James Wright's poem "A Blessing".

They were gone when she finally got back upstairs, and the police were dragging away someone the Batman had knocked out. "Rachel," Harvey shouted, though there was no need to shout, ditching the cops he was talking to and catching her in a hug, her dress slower to catch up and brushing her ankles in mid-air, where he'd lifted her joyfully. "God, what happened? I heard -- "

"I'm fine," she said, because the last thing he needed to hear right now was how the Joker had dropped her out of a window. And she was fine, really, or she'd be fine, and she was currently close enough to it for this town. "Are you okay?"

"Thanks to Bruce." The words were barely out of Harvey's mouth when there was Bruce, out of nowhere, discreetly herding the cops out. There wasn't much they could do that he couldn't at this point, after all, and seeing as it was Batman's own home, there was probably less.

"It was nothing." Bruce's voice was quiet, nearly that of Batman, and she wondered if Harvey might not catch onto him on his own. "Look, let me fix you two a couple of drinks, something to settle your nerves."

"I've caused you enough trouble," Harvey protested, and Rachel smiled, taking his hand.

"Bruce gets into plenty of trouble without our help," she said, less because she wanted a drink and more because, if she was being honest with herself, she didn't feel safe without both of them near right now.

They would both, she guessed, say something to the effect of it being her who got them to it, that it was always she who could bring Bruce near enough to the world, Harvey far enough out of it. But she couldn't have found herself like this -- and that was how it seemed, that suddenly she simply _found herself_ kissing Bruce with her arm still tight around Harvey's waist -- she couldn't have found herself like this if it had been any two other men in the world. Of that much she was certain.

She was certain of how much she loved Harvey when he didn't say anything, when he just understood, and rather than pull her away he just pulled closer to her. His hands slid easily along the fabric of her dress, and his chin rested lightly on her shoulder. She could smell them both, and wondered if Harvey could smell that tang of sweat on Bruce's skin, too, or if she just smelled it because she knew it had to be there to begin with.

When they broke their kiss, Bruce started to speak, and then Harvey kissed him instead, and she knew, with as much clarity as she had ever known anything, how much she loved him -- -- how much she loved both of them. Bruce said nothing to this, didn't move, but the kiss lingered on, and she pressed her mouth to Harvey's throat and felt him move closer to both of them in response. One of Bruce's arms moved, and when she realized it had gone, lightly, to Harvey's back, she closed her eyes and sighed, thrilling with hope and love and something hotter and brighter still.

They did have that drink after all, though. Sitting on the couch, getting closer and closer together, she wasn't sure, in the end, whose hand was whose. It wasn't enough to get drunk on, and given that they kept touching, that there was an incessant brushing of body against body, it wasn't even enough to take the edge off.

In the end, they found their way to the bed somehow, the other two shedding jackets and ties along the way, Gotham's lights glittering below. Harvey hesitated after his shirt came off, and she pulled his face to her and kissed him again, pushing him down onto the bed, not sure where Bruce was in relation to them and not caring for the moment, because it was enough to know he was nearby.

Harvey liked it when she bit him, just a little bit, and she pulled her mouth from his and undid a button, gently -- deliberately -- closing her teeth on the soft, dry skin of his throat. Rachel heard him groan and felt it in her own skin, they were so close together. She was shivering in reaction to hands on her back, and that told her, more than his touch itself, where Bruce was. Her dress might've unzipped itself, for all that Bruce seemed to be touching her. She tried not to laugh at that barely-there touch, but she'd always been ticklish, which he had to _know_, for God's sake, it was _Bruce_, but he got this way sometimes, and a giggle escaped her in spite of herself.

"It just tickled," she said, when everyone froze. Rachel thought that if anyone ought to be jumpy about unexpected laughter it ought to be the one of them who'd just been dropped out of a window, but she guessed she wouldn't love them if they didn't care like this.

"I'm sorry," Bruce whispered. His voice was low, intimate, rough; she wondered, briefly, again, if Harvey might recognize it.

"No," she said. She grasped Harvey's wrists just to remind him that she was still with him as well, sinking back against Bruce's hands a little harder as he slipped the dress from her shoulders. "It's nice to laugh."

Harvey was smiling when she opened her eyes, which seemed like a promising sign for how they would all react to this tomorrow morning, and he turned his hands just enough that they were clasping each other's before letting go. He sat up for a moment, and moved too quickly for her to stop him, and then they were all lying there giggling, even Bruce, such as he _did_ giggle these days, and she was squashed between them. It shouldn't have been sexy but it was, and she pretended for a moment that she could tell Harvey he'd just taken the Batman by surprise.

There was no graceful way out of her dress when they untangled themselves just enough for her to finally sit back up -- the brush of skin against her back let her know that Bruce had opened his shirt, but the stiffer-seeming scrape of fabric, even expensive fabric, against her arm let her know that he hadn't taken it off altogether. She understood why when Harvey's eyes went past her as he maneuvered to let her shed her dress, to slip out of his own shirt, because he let out a low whistle.

"You do keep busy, don't you, Wayne?" he asked, and she felt Bruce freeze again. From the corner of her eye, she saw that his skin was covered with bruises fading to purple and green.

"Charity polo match," he said, but it sounded choked, rough, and if it weren't for the fact that they were in the middle of a threesome, that would've likely given him away then and there. "Horses don't like me much," he added, and it didn't sound much more convincing.

Rachel slipped Harvey's shirt completely off his shoulders and pushed him back down, settling on top of him now that her dress was gone. His hands played along her thighs until she leaned down to kiss him again, and she felt Bruce's arms go around her waist as she pinned Harvey's wrists to the (incredibly soft) mattress. She bit at his shoulder this time, and a low cry escaped him; she felt him stiffen further beneath her ass. Her own body responded in kind to that noise, warmth shooting through her, and she pushed back against Bruce a little harder, trying to signal to him that she wasn't going to break anytime soon.

The Batman's light touch proved its use, however, when she realized that her underwear had disappeared without her even noticing. Knowing that this laughter would be harder to explain, she made more of an effort to swallow it, muffling it as a groan against Harvey's mouth and rubbing herself against the soft cotton beneath his open fly.

Bruce's hand left her skin, his presence was gone from her back, just for a moment, and then his hand was on hers, something small and crackly held in it. She saw that it was one of the condoms she always kept in every purse and clutch just in case, and wasn't surprised that he hadn't any of his own around at all. Harvey sat up and leaned against her, held her close, like he was trying to reassure someone of something, but who or what she didn't know.

"Thank you," she mumbled, to whichever of them would take it. Rachel noticed that now Harvey's eyes were open, that he was looking at something beyond her. There was something like tenderness in his face, which reassured her, and it all felt a little more solid beneath her when she had to pull them apart to position herself right atop him. Bruce's arms went back to her shoulders, her waist, and she felt, or thought she felt, something pass between him and Harvey, but couldn't guess what.

"It's okay, Bruce," she breathed, and he tightened his arms around her once more, as if in thanks, resting his forehead against her back for just a moment. His lips met her skin, her spine, and kept alighting along her skin as she began to move a little harder on Harvey. Rachel's hands stayed where they were, pinning Harvey's, which she felt begin to twitch and scrabble against the smooth, light bed sheets as she picked up her own pace. One of Bruce's hands was gone from her skin, now, though he was pressing ever closer to her. Even with Batman's stealth, he couldn't disguise the sounds he made, in these close quarters. She was grateful for that, because she wanted him here with them, she would have waited until they were home again if she didn't.

For some moments, minutes, she couldn't be sure how long, it was all skin on skin on skin. Time had a way of skittering around on occasions like this, from eternally slow to mere flashes of sensation, but Rachel was acutely aware of skin throughout it all. Bruce, of course, was in near-superhuman shape, and for all his complaints of the job's demands Harvey still found time, somehow, to make the gym. She moisturized and worked out and all that was necessary, too, and together they were like petals in a spring storm, like she didn't know what, she hadn't ever bothered thinking of the words for something like this because she would never have dreamed of needing them. It was all heat and sweat and startlingly soft skin.

The lights in Bruce's bedroom were off, but the city held enough light for them to go on. The shadows and darkness couldn't hide the shape of their bodies, and Gotham far below glittered when her eyes forced themselves closed with the swelling of sensation in her body.  
   
   
   
   
Bruce was gone when she woke with the daylight, which didn't surprise her in the least. She listened to Harvey sleep, and she thought, for a second (knowing even then that it wasn't anything but fantasy), about waking him up and telling him everything. She didn't, of course; she heard someone moving around, and decided to seek Bruce out instead, because Harvey could use all the sleep he could get. They all could, really, given the days that were no doubt ahead, but she and Bruce were already awake, and thus a lost cause.

"Well, I can't say I've ever done _that_ before," Rachel said. There had been a robe in the bathroom, and it fell loosely about her bones as she found her way to the kitchen.

Bruce looked up, and she leaned over the island in the kitchen to kiss him on the cheek. She was vaguely surprised that he was still here; she expected him to be long gone by now, saving Gotham in whatever secret hideout he no doubt had somewhere. There was no escape from the light when it was daytime, which she suspected was part of the reason that Bruce picked it -- after all, he had more than enough in the way of shadows and darkness going on already.

He laughed, just a little. It was a nice sound. It was a sound she hadn't heard much since they were kids. "Me either," he said. "Ballet to the contrary."

"I don't know about you," Rachel added, taking the coffee he offered her, "but I don't think I'll ever be able to look Alfred in the face again."

"You'd be surprised what you can keep a straight face with Alfred about." Bruce was smiling down at the counter as he handed her another cup, and she was startled by the tender, raw feeling that shot through her when she realized he'd thought of Harvey, too.  
   
   
   
   
Rachel couldn't know how they would react to each other that night. For all she knew she was still the only thing joining them. She was agonizing over how she ought to feel about that when she realized that it didn't matter. For the second time in her life, and the second time in as many nights, she found herself spending the night with the two men she loved most in the world. She still wasn't certain how it happened, whose idea it was. All she knew was that Harvey came to Bruce's to pick her up, and one of them suggested that they both just stay, and then it was happening all over again.

It was different tonight; Bruce and Harvey threw themselves against each other nearly as desperately as either of them did against her. The shadowed hollows of their skin moved with them, untouchable crescents and pools that disappeared and re-formed as Gotham's daylight vanished and the millions of stars below them came on.

Desperation _was_ the word for it, for all of them, tonight. She was desperate too -- for what, she couldn't guess, because she didn't want to change Bruce's mind but she knew he couldn't do this.

She wondered if Harvey might figure it out for himself, Bruce's behavior was so changed from the night of the party. She almost asked him, the next morning, when Bruce was gone again and neither of them could sleep but neither of them wanted to get up and search for him, and they just lay together in silence instead.

"I have to stop him," Harvey said at last, which was when she thought he must've caught on. "Batman," he added, and that he felt the need to say it for her benefit told her he hadn't after all. "He can't turn himself in."

"Maybe he's not what Gotham needs," she said. "Not right now."

Harvey didn't say anything to that. He didn't believe it, she could tell already.

Bruce entered, then, and she wondered if he'd just been waiting for his cue. It was tea this time -- Alfred's influence, she supposed, and it hurt the most to realize she'd probably not be seeing him for a long time after today. "Maybe Rachel's right," Bruce said. "Maybe we need to believe in you, instead."

She thought, for a second, that Bruce was making fun of them again, but his face said nothing of the kind, and she stared into her tea instead as the three of them sat together. There was warmth all around, with the blankets and the bodies and the tea, but her back was cold against the air. She was grateful when Harvey leaned against her, putting an arm around her, but that feeling didn't last.

"What am I supposed to believe in, though?" he asked, and although he laughed as he said it, she knew there was nothing to it.

Rachel was afraid to look at Bruce lest Harvey catch on, then, and she continued to look back down into her tea instead, like maybe there would be an answer there. Dawn was still only just breaking, but nonetheless, most of the lights of Gotham's nighttime had gone out.


End file.
